We did some math and we calculated that we can climb at a rate of 2ft per second with 2 cims driving our climber. Of course we are probably going to gear it down because we don’t want it to climb that fast. If ours works, we can probably climb in roughly 10-15 seconds. Especially if you have your climbing procedure automated.
I would just like to point out that you do not need to get 90" off the ground, the lowest part of your robot just needs to be ABOVE 60.75" or so off the ground. (.75" for the radius of the pipe) Whether or not this makes it seem more or less possible is up to you.
We’ve run our battery off of a single charge for well over a half an hour driving around, shooting, ramming, and balancing while practicing last year, so I don’t see power as being too much of an issue. That is, as long as you have enough batteries and enough chargers to have a full charge every match, you should be fine.
How would you implement a pneumatic climber? I could definitely see using pneumatics to actuate claws, but aren’t they mostly useful for pushing and not pulling, as the majority of the movement in the climb would be?
When your team gets your climber working well, could you post a video of it climbing? I’m interested in seeing other teams’ approaches to the pyramid :]
Implying that it is impossible is not a very productive use of time. Although some things are impossible, this is not one of them. It is simply really, really hard.
We will not see many 30pt climbs this season. A shooter is a lot easier to build. But that is not to say that you should not consider trying to build a climber.
Of course I believe its possible, but few teams will be able to. I see part of the challenge this year is to either sacrifice a high climb and be a good shooter, or sacrifice shooting and be a dedicated 3rd level climber.
My team has spent awhile designing and coming up with ways to climb and we even have a design that would work for level 3. But then one of our mentors pointed out how much battery power it would take to get to the 3rd level. So we actually designed two climbers. One for a quick level one climb and a 3rd level climb if we want to take the risk.
I’m really hoping that this year we’ll see the first triple-hybrid mechanism – one that uses motors, pneumatics AND constant-force springs to move up the pyramid. It’s the perfect year for it, and totally removes the issues with battery drain. Essentially the motor must overcome the force of the spring to put a latch in place, then the motor reverses while the cylinder kicks in and all 3 force-providing mechanisms pull the robot up.
I think a 30-pt climb is possible, but the sacrifice for 99% of the teams needs to be evaluated on a team-by-team basis (I think only 1% of teams are even capable of doing a 30-pt climb while also being good at everything else). For us, it just isn’t there (sad face).
They can be used to drive linkages that lift the entire robot.
This really isn’t that tough to design, the biggest issue is the weight of the cylinders and the volume of air needed to drive the system, However I haven’t put too much thought into it yet but I’m sure it can be done.
Is the 30 point climb worth the effort. I think we will see teams do the 30 point climb on the first weekend of the regionals. I also think we will see teams fall from 3 to 5 feet and distroy their robot for the weekend. It is easy to do a 10 point climb with the only problem to worry about is a robot falling on you from above. I think the climb is not the game changer, the changer is getting the 6 disc in the top of the pyramid (30 points). I do not think that the 30 point climb is worth the effort if it DOES NOT takes away from your shooting abilities.